Business Quotes from Legendary Leaders

"Just as you would not permit a fellow employee to steal a piece of office equipment, you shouldn't let anyone walk away with the time of his fellow managers."

"No man becomes rich unless he enriches others."

"The man who dies rich dies disgraced."

"Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results."

"As I grow older, I pay less attention to what men say. I just watch what they do."

"The first man gets the oyster, the second man gets the shell."

"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."

"Do your duty and a little more and the future will take care of itself."

"Concentrate your energies, your thoughts and your capital. The wise man puts all his eggs in one basket and watches the basket."

"There is little success where there is little laughter."

"You cannot push anyone up the ladder unless he is willing to climb."

"The average person puts only 25% of his energy and ability into his work. The world takes off its hat to those who put in more than 50%."

"Surplus wealth is a sacred trust which its possessor is bound to administer in his lifetime for the good of the community."

"The question isn't who is going to let me; it's who is going to stop me."

"The ladder of success is best climbed by stepping on the rungs of opportunity."

"A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others."

"The hardest thing to explain is the glaringly evident which everybody has decided not to see."

"Learn to value yourself, which means: fight for your happiness."

"Achievement of your happiness is the only moral purpose of your life."

"The man who does not value himself, cannot value anything or anyone."

"Throughout the centuries there were men who took first steps down new roads armed with nothing but their own vision."

"I started my life with a single absolute: that the world was mine to shape in the image of my highest values and never to be given up to a lesser standard."

"The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them."

"Money is only a tool. It will take you wherever you wish, but it will not replace you as the driver."

"I swear by my life and my love of it that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine."

"The Network State is a highly aligned online community with a capacity for collective action that crowdfunds territory around the world."

"Software is reorganizing the world."

"The future is already here, it's just unevenly distributed. Our job is to figure out where it is and bring it back."

"Voice and exit are the two fundamental responses to any system you dislike."

"The internet is the great equalizer. With a laptop and wifi, you can compete with anyone."

"The most important skill in the 21st century is the ability to filter signal from noise."

"Pseudonymous economy: build a following, start a company, create a reputation—all without revealing your legal name."

"The 20th century was about atoms. The 21st century is about bits."

"Regulatory arbitrage is just another name for freedom."

"History tells us what people do; historical fiction tells us what it felt like to be there."

"Technology is the driving force of history, and we are in the middle of the largest technological transformation in human history."

"Ideas are the new oil. The countries and companies that generate the best ideas will dominate the 21st century."

"Hard things are hard because there are no easy answers or recipes. They are hard because your emotions are at odds with your logic."

"Take care of the people, the products, and the profits—in that order."

"There are no shortcuts. Everything worth doing is going to be hard."

"The Struggle is when you wonder why you started the company in the first place."

"As a startup CEO, I slept like a baby. I woke up every two hours and cried."

"In good organizations, people can focus on their work and have confidence that if they get their work done, good things will happen for both the company and them personally."

"Hire for strength rather than lack of weakness."

"The most important rule of raising money privately: Look for a market of one."

"Every time you make the hard, correct decision you become a bit more courageous, and every time you make the easy, wrong decision you become a bit more cowardly."

"Peacetime CEO knows that proper protocol leads to winning. Wartime CEO violates protocol in order to win."

"What you do is who you are."

"Culture is not a set of beliefs, it's a set of actions."

"Being a good company doesn't matter when things go well, but it can be the difference between life and death when things go wrong."

"An investment in knowledge pays the best interest."

"By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail."

"Well done is better than well said."

"Time is money."

"Beware of little expenses. A small leak will sink a great ship."

"Energy and persistence conquer all things."

"Hide not your talents. They for use were made. What's a sundial in the shade?"

"Never leave that till tomorrow which you can do today."

"Diligence is the mother of good luck."

"The doors of wisdom are never shut."

"Lost time is never found again."

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing."

"Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement, and success have no meaning."

"Men and women want to do a good job, a creative job, and if they are provided the proper environment, they will do so."

"Never try to make money out of a new product or a new technology—try to make a product out of new technology."

"If you want to succeed, double your failure rate."

"Our objective is to design, manufacture, and market innovative products that make a contribution to technical progress."

"The company was founded on the idea that you treat every employee with respect."

"How many companies have fallen into the trap of just seeking growth for growth's sake? They failed because they lost track of the fundamentals."

"I believe in wandering around. It's the most important source of information."

"Make a technical contribution to the world. That's what we set out to do."

"Manufacturing is the backbone of national security. If you can't make things, you can't defend yourself."

"The U.S. has outsourced its manufacturing capability for 40 years. We're trying to bring it back, but with automation instead of cheap labor."

"Every precision part in an F-35 has a story of a small machine shop struggling to meet demand. That's a problem software can solve."

"The average machinist in America is 56 years old. In 10 years, there won't be anyone left who knows how to make things. Automation isn't a choice; it's a necessity."

"We're not replacing workers; we're replacing the jobs that no one wants to do anymore and that no one is training for."

"The best founders are the ones who see a problem so clearly that they can't not work on it."

"Building hardware companies is hard. Building manufacturing companies is harder. That's why no one does it."

"Silicon Valley optimized for software because software is easy to scale. But the real world runs on atoms, not bits."

"You can't 3D print your way to industrial capacity. Real manufacturing requires real machines, real processes, and real expertise."

"The factory of the future won't have workers doing repetitive tasks. It will have engineers solving problems while machines do the work."

"Defense manufacturing has been stuck in the 1980s. We're bringing it to the 2020s, one CNC machine at a time."

"Speed is a feature. If you can make parts in days instead of months, you change the entire dynamics of production."

"The supply chain isn't broken. It was never built to handle what we're asking of it. We need to rebuild it from scratch."

"America used to make things. We used to be proud of our factories. We can have that again, but we have to build it ourselves."

"Every great country needs manufacturing capability. You can't have a strong economy or strong defense without the ability to produce."

"You've got to have models in your head. And you've got to array your experience—both vicarious and direct—on this latticework of models."

"I never allow myself to hold an opinion on anything that I don't know the other side's argument better than they do."

"Knowing what you don't know is more useful than being brilliant."

"The safest way to try to get what you want is to try to deserve what you want."

"Show me the incentive and I will show you the outcome."

"The big money is not in the buying and selling, but in the waiting."

"It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent."

"All I want to know is where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there."

"Invert, always invert: Turn a situation or problem upside down. Look at it backward."

"In my whole life, I have known no wise people who didn't read all the time—none, zero."

"Spend each day trying to be a little wiser than you were when you woke up."

"Three things ruin people: drugs, liquor, and leverage."

"To a man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail."

"Take a simple idea and take it seriously."

"Information is the resolution of uncertainty."

"I just wondered how things were put together."

"The fundamental problem of communication is that of reproducing at one point either exactly or approximately a message selected at another point."

"I think the history of science has shown that valuable consequences often come from simple curiosity."

"I've always pursued my interests without much regard to financial value or value to the world. I've spent lots of time on totally useless things."

"What are the things that you find most pleasurable? There's an awful lot of fun to be gotten out of life."

"After you have found the answer, you should ask if there's a simpler way to get there."

"We know the past but cannot control it. We control the future but cannot know it."

"A very small percentage of the population produces the greatest proportion of the important ideas."

"You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you."

"Any fool can criticize, complain, and condemn—and most fools do. But it takes character and self-control to be understanding and forgiving."

"The only way to get the best of an argument is to avoid it."

"A person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language."

"Talk to someone about themselves and they'll listen for hours."

"The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way."

"Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage."

"Don't be afraid of enemies who attack you. Be afraid of the friends who flatter you."

"Remember, today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday."

"Most of the important things in the world have been accomplished by people who have kept on trying when there seemed to be no hope at all."

"If you want to gather honey, don't kick over the beehive."

"When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion."

"Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department."

"Take risks. Ask big questions. Don't be afraid to make mistakes; if you don't make mistakes, you're not reaching far enough."

"A company has a greater responsibility than making money for its stockholders. We have a responsibility to our employees to recognize their dignity as human beings."

"More companies die from overeating than starvation."

"Set out to build a company and make a contribution, not an empire and a fortune."

"The betterment of our society is not a job to be left to a few. It is a responsibility to be shared by all."

"Never try to take advantage of someone who is in trouble."

"You shouldn't gloat about anything you've done; you ought to keep going and find something better to do."

"The most important thing is to treat people with dignity and respect."

"Profit is the measure of our contribution to our customers."

"Product-market fit means being in a good market with a product that can satisfy that market."

"The best companies are built on insights that are true but not obvious."

"In a downturn, the companies that survive are the ones that get to profitability or have a clear path to it."

"Your burn rate determines your runway. Your runway determines your options."

"The CEO's job is to make the right decisions, not to make everyone happy."

"At PayPal, we had a culture of internal debate. The best idea wins, regardless of who has it."

"Yammer succeeded because we built for engagement first, then figured out the business model."

"The best time to raise money is when you don't need it. The worst time is when you do."

"A startup is a company designed to grow fast. That's the only essential thing."

"Default alive means if you stopped raising money today, you'd still survive. Every startup should aim for this."

"I tend to approach things from a physics framework. Physics teaches you to reason from first principles rather than by analogy."

"Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough."

"When something is important enough, you do it even if the odds are not in your favor."

"Work like hell. I mean you just have to put in 80 to 100 hour weeks every week."

"Persistence is very important. You should not give up unless you are forced to give up."

"I think it's possible for ordinary people to choose to be extraordinary."

"The first step is to establish that something is possible; then probability will occur."

"Starting a company is like staring into the abyss and eating glass."

"Brand is just a perception, and perception will match reality over time."

"If you get up in the morning and think the future is going to be better, it is a bright day. Otherwise, it's not."

"Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right."

"Coming together is a beginning, staying together is progress, and working together is success."

"Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently."

"Don't find fault, find a remedy."

"Quality means doing it right when no one is looking."

"A business that makes nothing but money is a poor business."

"Anyone who stops learning is old, whether at twenty or eighty. Anyone who keeps learning stays young."

"Vision without execution is just hallucination."

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses."

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal."

"Nothing is particularly hard if you divide it into small jobs."

"It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages."

"Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success."

"Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others."

"Change before you have to."

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage."

"Control your own destiny or someone else will."

"Face reality as it is, not as it was or as you wish it to be."

"If you don't have a competitive advantage, don't compete."

"Giving people self-confidence is by far the most important thing that I can do. Because then they will act."

"The team with the best players wins."

"Willingness to change is a strength, even if it means plunging part of the company into total confusion for a while."

"I've learned that mistakes can often be as good a teacher as success."

"Be candid with everyone."

"Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion."

"Your brand is what other people say about you when you're not in the room."

"We see our customers as invited guests to a party, and we are the hosts. It's our job every day to make every important aspect of the customer experience a little bit better."

"If you double the number of experiments you do per year, you're going to double your inventiveness."

"I knew that if I failed I wouldn't regret that, but I knew the one thing I might regret is not trying."

"Life's too short to hang out with people who aren't resourceful."

"If you're competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering."

"In the old world, you devoted 30% of your time to building a great service and 70% of your time to shouting about it. In the new world, that inverts."

"Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don't do anything new."

"A company shouldn't get addicted to being shiny, because shiny doesn't last."

"We've had three big ideas at Amazon that we've stuck with for 18 years, and they're the reason we're successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient."

"If you're not stubborn, you'll give up on experiments too soon. And if you're not flexible, you'll pound your head against the wall."

"I very frequently get the question: 'What's going to change in the next 10 years?' I almost never get the question: 'What's not going to change?'"

"If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success."

"Don't be afraid to give up the good to go for the great."

"The secret to success is to do the common things uncommonly well."

"A friendship founded on business is better than a business founded on friendship."

"I would rather earn 1% off a 100 people's efforts than 100% of my own efforts."

"Good leadership consists of showing average people how to do the work of superior people."

"I always tried to turn every disaster into an opportunity."

"The ability to deal with people is as purchasable a commodity as sugar or coffee and I will pay more for that ability than for any other under the sun."

"Singleness of purpose is one of the chief essentials for success in life, no matter what may be one's aim."

"True simplicity is derived from so much more than just the absence of clutter and ornamentation. It's about bringing order to complexity."

"We try to develop products that seem somehow inevitable. That leave you with the sense that that's the only possible solution."

"Different and new is relatively easy. Doing something that's genuinely better is very hard."

"There's a remarkable efficiency in doing something that is essential rather than doing something that is feature-driven."

"The best design explicitly acknowledges that you cannot disconnect the form from the material—the material informs the form."

"I think there is a profound and enduring beauty in simplicity, in clarity, in efficiency."

"We don't do focus groups—that's the most efficient way to create mediocrity."

"The defining qualities are about use: what it's made of, what it will be used for. It's like the most important thing is the way you touch it."

"I think one of the things you do with design is you try to connect products to people emotionally."

"Our goal is to try to bring a calm and simplicity to what are incredibly complex problems so that you're not aware really of the solution."

"When you're trying to solve a problem, your first solutions are complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, you can arrive at elegant solutions."

"Part of the job is to learn. Part of the job is to be fierce and be stubborn and not accept what seems to be accepted."

"A man always has two reasons for doing anything: a good reason and the real reason."

"The first step towards getting somewhere is to decide you're not going to stay where you are."

"Go as far as you can see; when you get there, you'll be able to see farther."

"I don't want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do."

"No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking."

"When you expect things to happen - strangely enough - they do happen."

"Anyone can be a millionaire, but to become a billionaire you need an astrologer."

"I owe the public nothing."

"The wise man bridges the gap by laying out the path by means of which he can get from where he is to where he wants to go."

"Well, I don't know as I want a lawyer to tell me what I cannot do. I hire him to tell me how to do what I want to do."

"The job of leadership is to create a world that people want to belong to."

"Editing is the most important skill for any leader. Edit the team, edit the strategy, edit the product."

"Barrels are people who can take an idea from conception to launch. Find and develop barrels."

"Most meetings are a waste of time. If you have to have them, make them short and have clear next steps."

"Simplify. Most companies make things too complicated. The best companies relentlessly simplify."

"Hire people who are better than you at their job. If they're not, why are you hiring them?"

"The best founders I know are like heat-seeking missiles for the truth."

"Distribution is more important than product. A great product with no distribution loses to a good product with great distribution."

"At Square, we obsessed over every pixel, every interaction. Details matter at scale."

"The best companies feel inevitable in retrospect but crazy in the moment."

"At Founders Fund, we back founders who want to build transformative companies, not just successful exits."

"The best investments are in companies that create new markets rather than compete in existing ones."

"PayPal succeeded because we were willing to do things that seemed crazy at the time."

"The most important thing in a startup is finding the right co-founders. Everything else follows from that."

"We look for founders who are obsessed with their problem, not founders who are obsessed with being founders."

"The best entrepreneurs I know are relentlessly curious about how things work."

"In venture capital, your reputation is everything. We try to be the investors founders want to work with."

"Technology should make things dramatically better, not incrementally better."

"I'm not interested in being politically correct. I'm interested in being correct."

"We are pragmatists. We don't stick to any ideology. Does it work? Let's try it, and if it does work, fine, let's continue it. If it doesn't work, toss it out, try another one."

"If Singapore is a nanny state, then I am proud to have fostered one."

"A nation is great not by its size alone. It is the will, the cohesion, the stamina, the discipline of its people, and the quality of their leaders which ensure it an honorable place in history."

"Life is not just eating, drinking, television, and cinema. The human mind must be occupied with higher things."

"You take a poll of any people. What do they want? The right to write an editorial as you like? They want homes, medicine, jobs, schools."

"We have to lock up people, without trial, whether they are communists, whether they are language chauvinists, whether they are religious extremists. If you don't do that, the country would be in ruins."

"Even from my sickbed, even if you are going to lower me into the grave and I feel something is going wrong, I will get up."

"The task of the leaders must be to provide or create for them a strong framework within which they can learn, work hard, be productive and be rewarded accordingly."

"I ignore polling as a method of government. I think that shows a certain weakness of character."

"Between being loved and being feared, I have always believed Machiavelli was right. If nobody is afraid of me, I'm meaningless."

"What I fear is complacency. When things always become better, people tend to want more for less work."

"Software is eating the world."

"In the future, there will be two kinds of jobs: those where you tell a computer what to do, and those where a computer tells you what to do."

"The spread of computers and the Internet will put jobs in two categories. People who tell computers what to do, and people who are told by computers what to do."

"There are only two ways to make money in business: One is to bundle; the other is unbundle."

"The best product ideas come from solving a problem you have yourself."

"It's time to build."

"The most valuable businesses of coming decades will be built by entrepreneurs who seek to empower people rather than to make them obsolete."

"The #1 reason people fail in startups is they don't make something people want."

"Retail is going to go the way of newspapers. Most retailers are going to go out of business."

"Big breakthrough ideas often seem crazy at first. If they didn't, someone else would have already done them."

"The product-market fit is when you build a product that creates significant customer value. It's the only thing that matters."

"Strong views, loosely held."

"It doesn't matter how many times you fail. You only have to be right once and then everyone can tell you that you are an overnight success."

"Work like there is someone working 24 hours a day to take it all away from you."

"Sweat equity is the most valuable equity there is."

"Sales cure all. Know how your company will make money and how you will actually make sales."

"Wherever I see people doing something the way it's always been done, the way it's 'supposed' to be done, following the same old trends, well, that's just a big red flag to me."

"Don't start a company unless it's an obsession and something you love. If you have an exit strategy, it's not an obsession."

"Everyone's got ideas. The hard part is doing the homework to know if the idea could work in an industry."

"What I've learned is that if you really want to be successful at something, you'll find that you put the time in. You won't just ask somebody if it's a good idea."

"In the past, people worked for large corporations because it was safe. In the future, working for a large corporation will be the riskiest thing you can do."

"I still work hard to know my business. I'm continuously looking for ways to improve all my companies."

"The sport of business is the ultimate competition. It's 7x24x365xforever."

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes."

"Starting a company is like throwing yourself off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down."

"The very first company I started failed. The second one failed. The third one failed. Then PayPal succeeded."

"A lot of people think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas."

"Fraud is the thing that makes payments hard. It's the thing that keeps everybody honest and everybody frustrated."

"The best way to predict the future is to implement it."

"I've learned that there is no substitute for sweat equity."

"At PayPal, we hired for intelligence, not experience. A smart person can learn anything."

"The things I've done well, I've been obsessive about. The things I've done poorly, I've not been obsessive about."

"Building something from nothing is the most rewarding thing you can do."

"Whatever the mind can conceive and believe, it can achieve."

"The starting point of all achievement is desire."

"A goal is a dream with a deadline."

"Strength and growth come only through continuous effort and struggle."

"Don't wait. The time will never be just right."

"When defeat comes, accept it as a signal that your plans are not sound, rebuild those plans, and set sail once more toward your coveted goal."

"Set your mind on a definite goal and observe how quickly the world stands aside to let you pass."

"If you cannot do great things, do small things in a great way."

"The way of success is the way of continuous pursuit of knowledge."

"Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit."

"More gold has been mined from the thoughts of men than has been taken from the earth."

"Action is the real measure of intelligence."

"The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail."

"Seek wealth, not money or status. Wealth is having assets that earn while you sleep."

"You're not going to get rich renting out your time. You must own equity—a piece of a business—to gain your financial freedom."

"Specific knowledge is knowledge you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else and replace you."

"Play iterated games. All the returns in life, whether in wealth, relationships, or knowledge, come from compound interest."

"The most important skill for getting rich is becoming a perpetual learner."

"Code and media are permissionless leverage. They're the leverage behind the newly rich."

"Happiness is a choice and a skill and you can dedicate yourself to learning that skill and making that choice."

"A fit body, a calm mind, a house full of love. These things cannot be bought—they must be earned."

"The number one thing clouding us from being able to see reality is we have preconceived notions of the way it should be."

"Reading is faster than listening. Doing is faster than watching."

"Escape competition through authenticity."

"Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage."

"If you can't code, write books and blogs, record videos and podcasts."

"All the real benefits in life come from compound interest."

"The direction you're heading matters more than how fast you're going."

"The best way to predict the future is to make it. But you have to actually make things, not just predict them."

"Silicon Valley has a way of thinking that if you're working on defense, you're working on something evil. I think that's fundamentally wrong."

"The defense industry has been doing the same thing for decades. They're not trying to build better products; they're trying to build products that satisfy procurement requirements."

"You can't just build technology and hope someone figures out how to use it. You have to build complete solutions."

"The government is not going to innovate. It's never going to be the source of cutting-edge technology. That has to come from the private sector."

"People underestimate how much of success is just being willing to work on something that other people think is impossible or stupid."

"I started working on VR in my parents' garage because I believed it was the future. Everyone thought I was crazy. Turns out they were right about me being crazy, but wrong about VR."

"The traditional defense contractors have no incentive to move fast or build better products. Their incentive is to keep programs going as long as possible."

"If you want to change an industry, you can't just be incrementally better. You have to be fundamentally different."

"The best people want to work on hard problems that matter. Defense is full of hard problems that matter."

"I'd rather try to do something great and fail than do something mediocre and succeed."

"Everyone in tech talks about changing the world, but most of them are building advertising companies. We're building things that actually protect people."

"Hardware is hard. That's why most people avoid it. But that's also why there's so much opportunity."

"The United States needs to maintain technological superiority. That's not optional if you want to keep the peace."

"Move fast and build things. Not just break things - actually build things that work."

"I thought everybody had what I had. I just assumed I was stupid."

"My learning disability gave me certain advantages, because I was able to live in the moment and capitalize on the opportunities I spotted."

"I can't read or write well, so I hired people who could and I was forced to delegate."

"The biggest mistake people make is to think small. Think big, and you'll get big results."

"At Kinko's, we didn't have employees, we had co-workers. The distinction was important."

"I always said Kinko's succeeded in spite of me, not because of me. I just got out of the way."

"I never had a plan. Plans are overrated. What matters is being alert and responsive."

"The customer is not always right, but the customer is always the customer."

"I spent my whole career not going to work. I went out visiting stores, talking to workers and customers."

"Cash is more important than your mother."

"The best way to predict the future is to create it."

"What gets measured gets managed."

"Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things."

"Management is doing things right; leadership is doing the right things."

"The purpose of business is to create and keep a customer."

"There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all."

"Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes."

"The most important thing in communication is hearing what isn't said."

"Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work."

"Results are obtained by exploiting opportunities, not by solving problems."

"Time is the scarcest resource and unless it is managed nothing else can be managed."

"Meetings are by definition a concession to deficient organization. For one either meets or one works."

"The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity."

"Follow effective action with quiet reflection. From the quiet reflection will come even more effective action."

"Competition is for losers."

"What important truth do very few people agree with you on?"

"The most contrarian thing of all is not to oppose the crowd but to think for yourself."

"Every moment in business happens only once. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page won't make a search engine."

"A startup messed up at its foundation cannot be fixed."

"Monopoly is the condition of every successful business."

"The best entrepreneurs know this: every great business is built around a secret that's hidden from the outside."

"Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1."

"If you want to create and capture lasting value, don't build an undifferentiated commodity business."

"All happy companies are different: each one earns a monopoly by solving a unique problem. All failed companies are the same: they failed to escape competition."

"Brilliant thinking is rare, but courage is in even shorter supply than genius."

"In a world of scarce resources, globalization without new technology is unsustainable."

"Pain + Reflection = Progress."

"If you're not failing, you're not pushing your limits, and if you're not pushing your limits, you're not maximizing your potential."

"Don't worry about looking good—worry about achieving your goals."

"Truth—or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality—is the essential foundation for any good outcome."

"The greatest gift you can give someone is the power to be successful. Giving people the opportunity to struggle rather than giving them the things they are struggling for will make them stronger."

"Radical open-mindedness and radical transparency are invaluable for rapid learning and effective change."

"People who have shared values and principles get along. People who don't will suffer through constant misunderstandings and conflicts."

"Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what."

"Be radically open-minded. The ability to learn is far more important than the ability to know."

"Meaningful work and meaningful relationships are not just nice things we choose for ourselves—they are genetically programmed into us."

"Time is like a river that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make decisions."

"Look for people who have lots of great questions. Smart people are the ones who ask the most thoughtful questions."

"If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late."

"No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you're playing a solo game, you'll always lose out to a team."

"The fastest way to change yourself is to hang out with people who are already the way you want to be."

"Your network is the people who want to help you, and you want to help them, and that's really powerful."

"An entrepreneur is someone who jumps off a cliff and builds a plane on the way down."

"Silicon Valley is a mindset, not a location."

"All humans are entrepreneurs not because they should start companies but because the will to create is encoded in human DNA."

"The entrepreneurial journey starts with jumping off a cliff and assembling an airplane on the way down."

"The next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine."

"Maintaining an interesting and diverse network is a key to career success."

"Blitzscaling is what you do when you need to grow really, really quickly."

"We look for the combination of a brilliant founder with a great market. When those two collide, magic happens."

"The best founders are missionaries, not mercenaries. They're building something they believe in."

"At PayPal, we learned that the company that moves fastest wins. Speed is the ultimate competitive advantage."

"The best time to join a startup is when it's still small enough for you to have impact but large enough to survive."

"We don't invest in business plans. We invest in people with insights about the future."

"YouTube was built by a team of three people in a room above a pizza shop. Great things start small."

"The companies that endure are the ones that create real value for their customers, not the ones that extract value."

"When evaluating a startup, I ask: Is this a vitamin or a painkiller? Painkillers build bigger businesses."

"Being a CFO at PayPal taught me that financial discipline and growth aren't mutually exclusive."

"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes its laws."

"Buy when there's blood in the streets, even if the blood is your own."

"I care not what puppet is placed upon the throne of England to rule the Empire on which the sun never sets. The man who controls Britain's money supply controls the British Empire."

"It takes a great deal of boldness and a great deal of caution to make a great fortune."

"Concordia, Integritas, Industria."

"The time to buy is when there's blood in the streets."

"Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or an unlucky place."

"Who controls the issuance of money controls the government."

"Make a few there, lose a few here. That's how fortunes are made."

"Unity is strength. The five arrows representing the five brothers remain the family symbol."

"There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else."

"High expectations are the key to everything."

"Celebrate your successes. Find some humor in your failures."

"Capital isn't scarce; vision is."

"The key to success is to get out into the store and listen to what the associates have to say."

"Outstanding leaders go out of their way to boost the self-esteem of their personnel. If people believe in themselves, it's amazing what they can accomplish."

"Commit to your business. Believe in it more than anybody else."

"Control your expenses better than your competition. This is where you can always find the competitive advantage."

"Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom."

"Each Walmart store should reflect the values of its customers and support the vision they hold for their community."

"I had to pick myself up and get on with it, do it all over again, only even better this time."

"Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower."

"Stay hungry, stay foolish."

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do."

"Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works."

"People think focus means saying yes to the thing you've got to focus on. But that's not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas."

"Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."

"Simple can be harder than complex; you have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple."

"It doesn't make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do."

"I want to put a ding in the universe."

"Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life."

"Creativity is just connecting things."

"Be a yardstick of quality. Some people aren't used to an environment where excellence is expected."

"I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

"Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration."

"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time."

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work."

"There is no substitute for hard work."

"The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense."

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up."

"I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun."

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."

"There's a way to do it better. Find it."

"I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it."

"Restlessness is discontent, and discontent is the first necessity of progress."

"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment."

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."

"I believe the real difference between success and failure in a corporation can be very often traced to the question of how well the organization brings out the great energies and talents of its people."

"Good design is good business."

"The basic philosophy, spirit, and drive of an organization have far more to do with its relative achievements than do technological or economic resources."

"We went to the moon in 1969, not because it was easy but because it was hard, and IBM helped make it possible."

"If you want to achieve excellence, you can get there today. As of this second, quit doing less-than-excellent work."

"The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm."

"Virtually every company in the world is making its plans based on computers. Our job is to help them succeed."

"The beliefs that mold great organizations frequently grow out of the character, the experience, and the convictions of a single person."

"We bet the company on the System/360. It was the biggest gamble in business history."

"THINK."

"Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself."

"To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business, and your business in your heart."

"Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate, and generous—not just to some people in some circumstances—but to everyone all the time."

"Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the danger of controversy."

"Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops."

"You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success—on the far side of failure."

"The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy."

"Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up."

"All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think."

"Rule No. 1: Never lose money. Rule No. 2: Never forget rule No. 1."

"It's far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price."

"Be fearful when others are greedy. Be greedy when others are fearful."

"Price is what you pay. Value is what you get."

"Only buy something that you'd be perfectly happy to hold if the market shut down for 10 years."

"Someone is sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago."

"Our favorite holding period is forever."

"The stock market is a device for transferring money from the impatient to the patient."

"In looking for people to hire, you look for three qualities: integrity, intelligence, and energy. And if you don't have the first, the other two will kill you."

"It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it."

"The more you learn, the more you earn."

"Read 500 pages every day. That's how knowledge works. It builds up, like compound interest."

"Risk comes from not knowing what you're doing."

"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked."

"The difference between successful people and really successful people is that really successful people say no to almost everything."